GALLERY 2010/2011

Description of idea

Describe your idea and concept of your work in relation to the festival outlines:

Critical Encounter (2010)

HD video (3min. 45 sec.) + rotating sculpture (dm = 1 m, height = 1,2 m). Actors: DanDara ViTaL & Kristofer Paetau. Camera: Robert Estermann & Rubens Pileggi Sá.

A seductive curator visits the artist’s studio but incompatibility of artistic vision turns the visit into a traumatic experience…

The film was shot in a cheap hotel in Rio de Janeiro where transvestite prostitutes go with their clients. The two improvising actors are DanDara ViTaL and myself. DanDara is supposedly a Brazilian curator making a studio visit to a foreign “gringo” artist who has made an artistic research in Rio de Janeiro. But things start going wrong from the beginning: the curator finds the studio strange and does not have much empathy for the research that I am trying to speak about. Soon a clash of artistic visions and values seems inevitable…

DanDara is a brazilian actress and a transvestite who does not speak nor understand English. In this film she is repeating phonetically the words that I told her on the spot. This not only gives her performance an absurd quality but also suggests the difficulty in art to find ‘a common language’ – whereas I speak an average non-native English but find myself incapable of explaining my art in a convincing manner.

Kristofer Paetau

What kind of communication approach do you use?

improvisation, performance, video, collaboration, critique, internet, humour

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication?

Often people get pissed off about my work, they get angry and mad at me. This is a good sign maybe. I hope my work is making people reflect about what they see more critically, about stereotypes, language, power, art.

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

I learned that it's good to loose control and to be forced to improvise.

Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK?

If it makes people reflect and smile I guess it's good communication work?

Where and how do you intent do implement your work?

On the internet, in video festivals and exhibitions and other communication platforms possibly.

Did your intervention had an effect on other Media. If yes, describe the effect? (Has other media reported on it- how? Were you able to change other media with your work- how?)